England slow on Twenty20 uptake

Lawrence Booth believes that the recent clash between Lalit Modi and the ECB over the Champions League dates, underlines England's standing in the Twenty20 scheme of things. Writing in the Wisden Cricketer, he says that Modi’s attempt to reconfigure England’s domestic calendar is symptomatic of their apathy towards the format.

At almost every turn, England has treated Twenty20 like a necessary evil. Even when the format emerged on the county scene in 2003, it was regarded as a crowd-puller rather than a legitimate form of cricket. After all, left elbows are supposed to be high, not jockeying for position in a mascots’ race or levering oneself out of the pitchside Jacuzzi.